Avinash Kaushik - Man 2.0

This is the Silly Series.  Don’t be afraid.  Take a deep breath, a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive.  Come with me on this journey to meet the extraordinary people in web analytics.

Today, it’s the turn of Avinash Kaushik, a man who would probably give you the shirt off his back if you asked him nicely.  But don’t do that – I don’t want him to catch a cold.

Avinash, tell us a little about you.

I am the co-founder of a start-up called Market Motive, it offers training and certification courses. I am also the Analytics Evangelist for Google and the author of Web Analytics 2.0 & Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.

100% of the proceeds of  BOTH your books go to charities (The Smile Train,  Médecins Sans Frontières and The Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation).  Are you out of your freakin’ mind?

I started my blog to give back some of the knowledge I had gained from others in the industry. So six months later when Wiley said they wanted to make it into a book and give me $10,000 to write it, I turned to my sweetheart and said: “We’ll never have this much money in a single chq and since it came from a labor of love why don’t we give it away to benefit others.”  I was amazed at how quickly she said yes (instantly deepening my love for her).

But that was just the start of the process. Much to my astonishment the first book sold more than 20,000 copies in just the first year, translations in six languages etc etc. Needless to say our chq from Wiley at the end of the year was significantly bigger than anticipated.

Though we knew how much money we could possibly make, the decision to donate all my proceeds to charity from the second book was even easier. We had gotten letters, we had seen Smile Pinki, we felt privileged to have another chance to do a very very tiny part for charities whose core mission is to change the lives.

Both books have sold well enough to enable us to donate over $150,000 to charity thus far. How awesome is that!

I am immensely grateful to people who buy the books and to the sweet delightful magnificent people who read my little blog and comment on it and inspire me to work harder every day.

If you were to get hit on the head tomorrow and forget all you know about web analytics, what new career path would you like to follow?

Pilot.  Supersonic and subsonic planes.

I have always wanted to do that.

Do you think that people are right to worry about their online privacy in terms of the use of tracking tools?

Yes.

As a consumer you should know what the privacy settings are in your browser and use them. For example, I don’t allow third party cookies to be set in my browser. If you visit certain sites frequently then glance at their privacy policies and if you think they are untrustworthy use them in a browser where you have javascript and cookies and flash etc turned off (one of my browsers is preset to this mode, IE!). Ultimately you are responsible for your own privacy.

As a website owner you should have a very very clear privacy policy that says in as simple terms as possible what you track and instructions on how to opt out. Here’s my humble attempt: Occam’s Razor Privacy Policy. An informed customer that trusts your website is always better. Oh and don’t be one of the jackhammers who snoops your customer’s browser history and does other sub-optimal stuff. It is just not worth it, no matter how cool you think it is.

As a web analytics vendor you should provide choice to the businesses that use your tools. Don’t be one of those lame vendors that use third party cookies to “opt out of tracking”. Have the courage to develop better opt out options like plugins. If a business’s website visitor have choice they are more likely to trust the website they are on which is great for everyone.

As a web analyst don’t be the aforementioned jackhammer, it is simply not worth it.  Even if you can’t track 30% of your website traffic, know that you have 50x more data than is available via any other Marketing channel. Collect anonymous data. If you need PII data for analysis (and only 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 do) then your first choice should be to store it outside cloud based analytics tools, and if you store it in cloud based tools then for the love of Jesus and Allah and Krishna please disclose it clearly in your website’s privacy policy.

Consumers should worry about privacy. They should always have a choice. We (consumers, site owners, vendors & analysts) should ensure that choice exists, and we should work hard to earn the trust of website users.

Who is your superhero-sans-cape in the web analytics community and why?

Michael Notté, Kris Irizawa and Gemma Muñoz Vera.

The hardest job in Web Analytics is that of a Practitioner. Consultant is easy. Twitter “Influencer” is easier. “Guru” is the easiest. Living in the front lines, dealing with practical, hard “chill you to your bone” issues is really really hard. I love Gemma, Kris and Michael because they deal with those challenges, and are very good at solving them.

The lovely part is that they then come back and share their lessons so that you and I can feel inspired and benefit from their wisdom. When I read their posts (Gemma’s using Google Translate!) I feel their passion to make their company more data driven, one day at a time.

I love them.

What is the oddest question you’ve ever taken during a speaking engagement?

Questions that start with: “Compared to television the web does not…”

What is your wish for the remainder of 2011?

I hope analytics professionals will continue to shift to business analysis from data analysis.

I hope web analytics vendors will kill 50% of their useless reports (100% would be too much to ask).

I hope people who populate our industry would be happy.

How long is a long tail, if measured in pieces of string?

It depends. ^)

What do you think is the greatest threat to the future of web analytics?

Nothing.

More people are using more devices to consume more data from websites and applications that are collecting ever more (anonymous) data with permission. Analysis of web data has only one way to go: Up.
If a young person asked me I would recommend this field as a recession proof career, if the young person is willing to invest in becoming an Analysis Ninja.

There will be bumps in the road. There will be legislation and tool evolution and privacy firestorms and…  well other stuff. But we (data analysis) are here. We are awesome. People better get used to it!

Web analytics is more art than science.  Discuss.

It is.

I wrote in a comment on my blog the other day that sometimes data informs insights and at other times insights / gut feel / HiPPO’s request inform the type of analysis we do / the data we use. The best Analysts I know of are ones who have the capacity to be agile in using their right brain AND their left brain.

Check out the full list of interviews in the Silly Series here!